Welcome to CompSci 171 Fall 2009
Introduction to AI.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~welling/teaching/ICS171spring07/ICS171fall09.html
Instructor:
Max Welling,
Office hours:
Teaching Assistant:
Yutian Chen
Book:
welling@ics.uci.edu
Wed. 1-2pm in BH 4028
Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach
Russell & Norvig
Prentice Hall
ICS-171:Notes 1: 1
• Grading:
-Homework (5%, mandatory)
-Quizzes (each other week) (15%)
-One project (20%)
-A midterm (20%)
-A Final Exam (40%)
Graded Quizzes/Exams
-Answers will be available on the class website
Grading Disputes:
Turn in your work for re-grading at the discussion section to the TA within 1 week.
Note: we will re-grade the entire exam: so your new grade could be higher or lower.
Course related issues can be addressed in the first 10 minutes of every class.
ICS-171:Notes 1: 2
Academic (Dis)Honesty
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It is each student’s responsibility to be familiar with UCI’s current
policies on academic honesty
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Violations can result in getting an F in the class (or worse)
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Please take the time to read the UCI academic honesty policy
– in the Fall Quarter schedule of classes
– or at: http://www.reg.uci.edu/REGISTRAR/SOC/adh.html
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Academic dishonesty is defined as:
– Cheating
– Dishonest conduct
– Plagiarism
– Collusion
ICS-171:Notes 1: 3
Syllabus:
Lecture 1. Introduction: Goals, history (Ch.1)
Lecture 2. Agents (Ch.2)
Lecture 3-4. Uninformed Search (Ch.3)
Lecture 5-6 Informed Search (Ch.4)
Lecture 7-8. Constraint satisfaction (Ch.5).  Project
Lecture 9-10 Games (Ch.6)
Lecture 11. Midterm
Lecture 12-13. Propositional Logic (Ch.7)
Lecture 14-15. First Order Logic (Ch.8)
Lecture 16-17. Inference in logic (Ch.9)
Lecture 18 Uncertainty (Ch.13)
Lecture 19. Philosophical Foundations (Ch.26).
Lecture 20. AI Present and Future (Ch.27).
Final
This is a very rough syllabus. It is almost certainly the case that
we will deviate from this. Some chapters will be treated only partially.
ICS-171:Notes 1: 4
Philosophical Foundations
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Weak AI: machines can act as if they were intelligent
Strong AI: machines have minds.
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Questions: what is a mind?
Will the answer be important for AI?
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Objection 1: humans are not subject to Godel’s theorem
Objection 2: humans behavior cannot be modeled by rules
Objection 3: machines cannot be conscious (what is consciousness ?)
Can a “brain in a vat” have the same brain states as in a body?
If I see red as green (always have), is this a different brain state?
Brain prosthesis experiment, are we a machine afterwards?
Chinese room: Does the Chinese room have a mind?
Do we need to give up the “illusion” that man is more than a machine?
HW: read chapter 26 on philosophical foundations and read
piece on intelligence. Form your own opinion and discuss this in class.
ICS-171:Notes 1: 5
Meet HAL
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2001: A Space Odyssey
– classic science fiction movie from 1969
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukeHdiszZmE&feature=related
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HAL
– part of the story centers around an intelligent computer called HAL
– HAL is the “brains” of an intelligent spaceship
– in the movie, HAL can
• speak easily with the crew
• see and understand the emotions of the crew
• navigate the ship automatically
• diagnose on-board problems
• make life-and-death decisions
• display emotions
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In 1969 this was science fiction: is it still science fiction?
ICS-171:Notes 1: 6
Ethics
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People might lose jobs
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People might have too much leasure time
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People might lose sense of uniqueness
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People might lose provacy rights
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People might not be held accountable for certain actions
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Machines may replace the human race...
ICS-171:Notes 1: 7
Different Types of Artificial Intelligence
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Modeling exactly how humans actually think
– cognitive models of human reasoning
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Modeling exactly how humans actually act
– models of human behavior (what they do, not how they think)
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Modeling how ideal agents “should think”
– models of “rational” thought (formal logic)
– note: humans are often not rational!
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Modeling how ideal agents “should act”
– rational actions but not necessarily formal rational reasoning
– i.e., more of a black-box/engineering approach
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Modern AI focuses on the last definition
– we will also focus on this “engineering” approach
– success is judged by how well the agent performs
-- modern methods are also inspired by cognitive & neuroscience
ICS-171:Notes 1: 8
(how people think).
Acting humanly: Turing Test
• Turing (1950) "Computing machinery and intelligence":
• "Can machines think?"  "Can machines behave intelligently?"
• Operational test for intelligent behavior: the Imitation Game
• Suggested major components of AI:
- knowledge representation
- reasoning,
- language/image understanding,
- learning
Can you think of a theoretical system that could beat the Turing test
yet you wouldn’t find it very intelligent?
ICS-171:Notes 1: 9
Acting rationally: rational agent
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Rational behavior: Doing that was is expected to maximize
one’s “utility function” in this world.
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An agent is an entity that perceives and acts.
A rational agent acts rationally.
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This course is about designing rational agents
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Abstractly, an agent is a function from percept histories to actions:
[f: P*  A]
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For any given class of environments and tasks, we seek the agent
(or class of agents) with the best performance
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Caveat: computational limitations make perfect rationality
unachievable
 design best program for given machine resources
ICS-171:Notes 1: 10
Academic Disciplines important to AI.
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Philosophy
Logic, methods of reasoning, mind as physical
system, foundations of learning, language,
rationality.
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Mathematics
Formal representation and proof, algorithms,
computation, (un)decidability, (in)tractability,
probability.
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Economics
utility, decision theory, rational economic agents
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Neuroscience
neurons as information processing units.
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Psychology/
Cognitive Science
how do people behave, perceive, process
information, represent knowledge.
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Computer
engineering
building fast computers
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Control theory
design systems that maximize an objective
function over time
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Linguistics
knowledge representation, grammar
ICS-171:Notes 1: 11
History of AI
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1943
1950
1956
1950s
• 1965
• 1966—73
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1969—79
1980-1986-1987-1995--
McCulloch & Pitts: Boolean circuit model of brain
Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
Dartmouth meeting: "Artificial Intelligence" adopted
Early AI programs, including Samuel's checkers
program, Newell & Simon's Logic Theorist,
Gelernter's Geometry Engine
Robinson's complete algorithm for logical reasoning
AI discovers computational complexity
Neural network research almost disappears
Early development of knowledge-based systems
AI becomes an industry
Neural networks return to popularity
AI becomes a science
The emergence of intelligent agents
ICS-171:Notes 1: 12
State of the art
• Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry
Kasparov in 1997
• Proved a mathematical conjecture (Robbins conjecture)
unsolved for decades
• No hands across America (driving autonomously 98% of the time
from Pittsburgh to San Diego)
• During the 1991 Gulf War, US forces deployed an AI logistics
planning and scheduling program that involved up to 50,000
vehicles, cargo, and people
• NASA's on-board autonomous planning program controlled the
scheduling of operations for a spacecraft
• Proverb solves crossword puzzles better than most humans
• Stanford vehicle in Darpa challenge completed autonomously a
132 mile desert track in 6 hours 32 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xibwwNVLgg
ICS-171:Notes 1: 13
Consider what might be involved in building a
“intelligent” computer….
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What are the “components” that might be useful?
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Fast hardware?
Foolproof software?
Chess-playing at grandmaster level?
Speech interaction?
• speech synthesis
• speech recognition
• speech understanding
– Image recognition and understanding ?
– Learning?
– Planning and decision-making?
ICS-171:Notes 1: 14
Can Computers play Humans at Chess?
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Chess Playing is a classic AI problem
– well-defined problem
– very complex: difficult for humans to play well
3000
2800
Garry Kasparov (current World Champion)
Points Ratings
2600
Deep Blue
Deep Thought
2400
2200
Ratings
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1966
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1971
1976
1981
1986
1991
1997
Conclusion: YES: today’s computers can beat even the best human
ICS-171:Notes 1: 15
Can we build hardware as complex as the brain?
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How complicated is our brain?
– a neuron, or nerve cell, is the basic information processing unit
– estimated to be on the order of 10 11 neurons in a human brain
– many more synapses (10 14) connecting these neurons
– cycle time: 10 -3 seconds (1 millisecond)
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How complex can we make computers?
– 106 or more transistors per CPU
– supercomputer: hundreds of CPUs, 10 9 bits of RAM
– cycle times: order of 10 - 8 seconds
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Conclusion
– YES: in the near future we can have computers with as many basic
processing elements as our brain, but with
• far fewer interconnections (wires or synapses) than the brain
• much faster updates than the brain
– but building hardware is very different from making a computer
behave like a brain!
ICS-171:Notes 1: 16
Can Computers Learn and Adapt ?
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Learning and Adaptation
– consider a computer learning to drive on the freeway
– we could code lots of rules about what to do
– and/or we could have it learn from experience
Darpa’s Grand Challenge. Stanford’s “Stanley” drove
150 without supervision in the Majove dessert
– machine learning allows computers to learn to do things without
explicit programming
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Conclusion: YES, computers can learn and adapt, when presented
with information in the appropriate way
ICS-171:Notes 1: 17
Can Computers “see”?
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Recognition v. Understanding (like Speech)
– Recognition and Understanding of Objects in a scene
• look around this room
• you can effortlessly recognize objects
• human brain can map 2d visual image to 3d “map”
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Why is visual recognition a hard problem?
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Conclusion: mostly NO: computers can only “see” certain types of
objects under limited circumstances: but YES for certain constrained
problems (e.g., face recognition)
ICS-171:Notes 1: 18
In the computer vision community
research compete to improve recognition
performance on standard datasets
ICS-171:Notes 1: 19
Conclusion
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AI is about building intelligent agents (robots)
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There are many very interesting sub-problems to solve:
– Learning, vision, speech, planning, …
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Surprising progress has been made (autonomous cars, chess
computers) but surprising lack of progress is also a fact (visual object
recognition).
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There is no doubts that AI has a bright future: technology is increasingly
getting smart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agx9vtuvY-M
ICS-171:Notes 1: 20